1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and method for extracting each element, such as a character (text) or a photograph, from image data.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a technique for extracting an element of image data, such as a text or a photograph, from image data, International Publication WO 2006/066325 discusses a method for dividing an input image into a plurality of blocks and executing color replacement on each block.
If an image is divided into a plurality of blocks, an area that belongs to one entire area may be determined as a small isolated area due to the division.
More specifically, the method discussed in International Publication WO 2006/066325 may delete the above-described small area as a result of erroneously determining that the small area is noise or may determine the area, which belongs to one entire area, as an isolated area.